In his book 1971: A Year in the Life of Color, Darby English considers a remarkable yet little-known moment in postwar modernism, when a number of artists of color embraced Color Field or, as the author calls it, color painting—the blandly elegant nonobjective art associated with Clement Greenberg’s theory of medium specificity—as a means of asserting not only their freedom to create as individuals (and not only as black artists) but also to propose a future in which matters of race would no longer be crucial to the meaning of a work of art and, as an ethical corollary, to the identity of a person.1 As English writes in the book’s introduction, these artists’ engagement with the “question about the cultural status of color—and more specifically, about visual modernism’s place in then-raging debates about the social and political fates of ‘colored’ people” positions this work, perhaps surprisingly for some, as a vital political expression of the period (p. 40). English centers his book on two exhibitions in 1971 that in different ways promoted opportunities for “interracial intimacy” (p. 9) and proposed different models of racial politics: Contemporary Black Artists in America, a survey of both representational and abstract works organized by the white curator Richard Doty at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and The De Luxe Show, an interracial group exhibition of Color Field painting and its sculptural analogue organized by the black painter and gallerist Peter Bradley and staged in an abandoned cinema in Houston. In meticulously reconstructing the conception, installation, and reception of these shows, English addresses the social and aesthetic forces that informed this understudied body of work. The book argues urgently and often persuasively not only for the politics of these abstract works and, in particular, their engagement with matters of race and identity, but also for how these politics can be discerned both in their formal properties and in the circumstances of their exhibition. In its vigorous refutation of what English calls “the localist orientation” (p. 43) of a major strand of criticism that positions “the black artist only as an apotheosis of racial personality” (p. 24), 1971 expands on English’s first book, How to See a Work in Complete Darkness. Drawing heavily on postmodern theories of difference, that book analyzed how art by Glenn Ligon, William Pope.L, Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson troubled staid notions of race by figuring the contingency and indeterminacy at the core of any conception of identity. In a similar vein, 1971 seeks to demonstrate how this lesser-known tradition of “black modernism” deconstructed racialized conceptions of identity and, more provocatively, how it did so by embracing the “American type” formalism championed by Greenberg and his followers.

中文翻译：

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1971年：《色彩生活中的一年》，达比·英语（Darby English）

关于视觉现代主义在当时有关“有色人种”的社会和政治命运的激烈辩论中的地位，使这项工作成为这一时期的重要政治表达，这也许使某些人感到惊讶（第40页）。English将他的书集中在1971年的两次展览上，这两次展览以不同的方式促进了“种族亲密”的机会（第9页），并提出了不同的种族政治模式：美国当代黑人艺术家，由美国当代黑人艺术家组织的代表性作品和抽象作品的调查纽约惠特尼美国艺术博物馆的策展人理查德·多蒂（Richard Doty），以及由黑人画家和画廊主彼得·布拉德利（Peter Bradley）组织并在休斯敦一所废弃电影院中上演的彩色领域绘画及其雕塑类比的跨种族团体展览《 De Luxe Show》 。在精心重构概念，装置，并在收到这些节目后，英语讲述了社会和审美力量，这些力量为这方面的研究工作提供了便利。这本书不仅紧急地而且经常具有说服力地为这些抽象作品的政治争论，尤其是它们与种族和身份问题的联系，而且还为如何从形式上的特性和其处境中辨别这些政治提出了争论。展览。1971年，在对英语所说的“地方主义取向”（第43页）的强烈反驳中，批评者将“黑人艺术家仅视为种族个性的典范”（第24页），这是对英语的第一本书的扩展。 ，如何在完全黑暗的环境中观看作品。该书大量借鉴后现代的差异理论，分析了Glenn Ligon，William Pope，L，Kara Walker，弗雷德·威尔逊（Fred Wilson）通过确定任何身份概念的核心的偶然性和不确定性，困扰着陈腐的种族观念。与此类似，1971年试图证明这种鲜为人知的“黑人现代主义”传统是如何解构种族化的身份观念的，更具有挑衅性的是，它如何接受格林伯格及其追随者拥护的“美国式”形式主义。